Locust Valley High School Film Festival

Students travel from all over Long Island to be part of the Locust Valley High School Film Festival. The sixth annual Film Festival brought aspiring filmmakers from 16 high schools to Locust Valley for a day of screening the event’s top submissions.

Using their creative writing, editing, acting, and producing skills, students came together to have their films judged by acclaimed film critic Sandy Kenyon of ABC News. Entries were scored in the categories of movie trailer, animation, public service announcement, commercial, documentary, music video, and short film. A winner and a runner-up in each category were awarded trophies, as well as scholarships from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT): $1,000 for winners and $750 for second place.

The festival, organized by Mr. Bruce Campbell, Ms. Gypsy Notov-Lew, and the LVHS Parent Council, provides an opportunity for students to view and learn from the work of their peers in other high schools. It is also an excellent showcase for the top-quality films that come from Locust Valley High School’s TV Production Film classes.

Entries from each of the participating high schools were submitted for pre-judging by volunteer critics from NYIT and Hofstra University, and by local filmmaker John Towse. The finalists’ projects chosen during this step were then shown at the film festival and judged by Mr. Kenyon, who was not told which schools the films were from until after his selections were made. Mr. Kenyon commented that several of the films were impressive enough that he would encourage those filmmakers to pursue this as a career.

Locust Valley took a first place award in the category of commercials with a film by John Ciarletta, Kevin O'Hare, John Nickas and Tony DiTuro. In the category of Animation, LVHS students Tom Broker, Vincent Scuderi and Victor Cafaro won a second place award. Every student who participated deserves recognition for their hard work and exceptional end result.